Let Satire Be My Song

Coleridge was an early disciple of the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, “the maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers” as Byron crowned him in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. This sonnet – a revised version of one that originally appeared in the Morning Chronicle – is one of ten included in Poems, together with Coleridge’s prose introduction on the sonnet form. The manuscript passed from the poet’s daughter Sara to the daughter of Robert Southey.